Chapter 24 #2
"I had to kill her myself. The woman I loved, the woman I'd turned to save, I put a blade through her heart to stop her from killing more. She didn’t even recognize me.
" I hold her gaze, let her see the old wound beneath the words.
"After that, I swore I'd never let myself care that much again.
Caring was weakness. Caring got people killed. "
"And now?"
"Now I look at you, and all those walls I built feel like sand against the tide.
" I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "I've survived wars, betrayals, a hundred and fifty years of enslavement.
I've outlived everyone I ever loved and learned to want nothing, need no one.
And then you looked at me in an alley while you were dying and called me pathetic, and I haven't been the same since. "
She laughs too, a small, surprised sound. "I was dying. My judgment was impaired."
"Your judgment was perfect. You saw exactly what I am. Ancient, controlled, terrified of anything I can't manage. And you weren't afraid of me."
"I was a little afraid."
"But you insulted me anyway."
"I've always had a problem with authority."
We're standing closer now. I don't remember moving, but the space between us has shrunk to something intimate, something charged. I can smell her, that indefinable scent that's purely her. I've been trying not to notice it for weeks. I'm done trying.
"I believe I made you a promise," I say, and my voice has dropped to something rougher. "At the Whitley. About what would happen when we got back here."
Her breath catches. "You said you were going to take this dress off me. Slowly."
"I remember." I reach out and trace my finger along the neckline of the dress, barely touching her skin. She shivers. "I remember every word I said. Just like I remember every word I said in the car. Every promise I made in the war room."
"You said you'd make good on all of them."
"I intend to."
I close the distance between us.
Her lips meet mine, and the world narrows to this single point of contact. She tastes like whiskey and something darker, something that's purely her. The kiss is tentative at first, a question. An invitation.
I answer it.
My hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers finding the sleek twist of her hair. The pins holding it in place press against my palm as I cup her head, angle her mouth more firmly against mine. She makes a small sound, not quite a gasp, not quite a moan, and something snaps loose in my chest.
All that control. All that discipline. All those carefully maintained walls. All the years of convincing myself that I didn't need anyone. All of it crumbling under the pressure of her lips moving against mine.
I back her against the desk, and she goes willingly, her hands fisting in the lapels of my jacket. The kiss deepens, hungrier now, more demanding. Her mouth opens under mine, and I take what she's offering, pouring centuries of loneliness into the space between us.
Her back hits the edge of the desk. Papers scatter.
A pen rolls off and clatters to the floor.
I don't care. My hands find her waist, the curve of her hip, the exposed skin of her lower back where the dress dips open.
She's cool to the touch, smooth, perfect.
I've been thinking about this skin all night.
Touching it through the thin excuse of guiding her.
Now I let myself feel it properly, spreading my palms across her bare back, pulling her closer.
The ring presses between us as she arches into me. I feel it against my chest, the hard circle of gold that marks her as mine. The sensation grounds me even as it inflames me. My ring. My ring against her skin, now pressed against mine. Something primitive and possessive roars to life in my chest.
She pulls at my jacket, and I shrug it off without breaking the kiss. It falls somewhere behind me, forgotten. Her fingers find the buttons of my shirt, work the first two open with efficiency that speaks to her practical nature, then slip inside to press against my chest.
"Maximus." My name on her lips, breathless and wanting. The sound of it nearly undoes me.
I kiss down the line of her jaw, the column of her throat, the place where the gold chain meets her collarbone. She tilts her head back to give me access, baring her throat with a trust that devastates me. In the vampire world, that gesture means something. It means everything.
My lips find the ring where it rests against her chest. I press a kiss to the cool metal, then to the skin around it, tracing the shape of my claim on her body. My mouth moves lower, following the plunge of the neckline, tasting the swell of her breast where the fabric barely contains it.
"You have no idea," I murmur against her skin, "what watching you tonight did to me."
"Tell me."
I lift my head to meet her eyes. They're dark, pupils blown wide, that same heated look I saw when I had the guard pinned to the wall.
"Every time you spoke, I thought about your mouth. Every time you crossed your legs and that slit revealed your thigh, I thought about what's between them."
Her breath shudders out. "I was. I couldn't stop."
"Neither could I." I run my hands up her thighs, pushing the fabric of the dress aside.
The slits allow me access, and I take it, feeling the lean muscle beneath her skin, the evidence of years of training and fighting.
"I've been thinking about what I promised you.
About tasting you properly. About taking my time. "
"Then do it." Her voice is strained. "You said when we got back. We're back."
God, I want to. I want to drop to my knees right here and bury my face between her thighs. I want to find out if she tastes as good as I remember. I want to make her come on my tongue, then my fingers, then me. I want to spend hours learning every way to make her fall apart.
I lift her onto the desk, scattering more papers, positioning myself between her thighs. The dress falls away, baring her legs completely. She wraps them around me, pulls me closer, and the contact is so intense I have to break the kiss.
She's perfect like this. Wrecked and wanting, her careful hair coming undone, her lipstick smeared, her eyes dark with need. Mine. She's mine.
Her hands move to my belt.
Her fingers fumble. Just slightly. Just enough that I notice.
Celeste doesn't fumble. She's precise, controlled, a fighter's economy of movement in everything she does.
But her hands are shaking now, just a little, and when I look at her face, I catch it.
Her eyes are closed too tightly. Not the soft surrender of pleasure.
Something harder. Like she's trying to block something out.
I still her hands with mine.
"Celeste. Look at me."
She does. And I see it. The want is there, but underneath it, something else. Something unsteady.
"Are you here with me?" I ask. "Or are you trying to prove something?"
She flinches. It's small, barely perceptible.
"I want this," she says.
"That's not what I asked."
She's quiet for a long moment. Her hands have gone still on my belt. When she finally speaks, her voice is smaller than I've ever heard it.
"I can't stop hearing her. Vivienne. What she said." She swallows. "What if she's right? Valentina turning me, me ending up here, with you. What if none of it was coincidence?"
There it is. The doubt I saw in the car. The poison Vivienne planted, still working its way through her.
I look at her. Really look. At the vulnerability she's letting me see, the fear underneath the want. Like she came here tonight trying to outrun the questions, bury them under sensation. And I almost let her.
If we do this now, if I take her on this desk the way every instinct is screaming at me to do, part of her will wonder.
I can't do that to her. I can't let our first time be shadowed by doubt.
I catch her wrists. Gently, but firmly.
She freezes. I see the flash of hurt in her eyes before she can hide it, the assumption that I'm about to push her away and call this a mistake.
And God, part of me wants to. Part of me, the part that's been running from this for weeks, the part that still hears Luciano's voice telling me that caring is weakness, is screaming at me to stop this now.
To rebuild the walls. To protect myself and her from whatever destruction caring will inevitably bring.
But that's not why I'm stopping. Not this time.
"Not like this," I say, and my voice comes out ragged. Wrecked. "Not tonight."
"Why?" The word is sharp. Defensive. She's bracing for rejection, and I hate that I've taught her to expect it.
"Because of what Vivienne said."
She flinches. Tries to pull her hands back. I don't let her.
"Not because I believe it," I say quickly. "Because you do. Or part of you does. And I won't have that between us. Not for this."
She stills. Searches my face.
"I don't want the first time I'm inside you to be something you question afterward.
" I release her wrists, bring my hands up to frame her face instead.
Force myself to meet her eyes even though every nerve in my body is screaming at me to stop talking and start touching.
"I don't want you wondering if you're here because you wanted to be, or because someone else wanted you to be.
I don't want Vivienne in this room with us. "
"She's not."
"Isn't she?" I brush my thumb across her lower lip, swollen from kissing.
"You were quiet for twenty minutes in the car.
You've been somewhere else since she’s said that, even when you were kissing me.
Part of you is still in that parlor, listening to her tell you that none of your choices are really yours. "
She's quiet. I watch her face, watch the emotions flickering across it. Frustration. Recognition. Something that might be relief.
"I hate that you're right," she says finally.